Poetry by Puma Perl

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​DEATH VALLEY BODEGA


I don’t know if my friend David Smith
died as he wished,
a white dove shooting from his mouth

This morning I woke wondering how close
the end is and which books to read 
while I still have a chance

My only hope
is that the dog goes first
She’s not even mine and

I’m not anybody’s 
My kids deserve the relief
of unburdening my weight

if I ever grow as heavy
as my mother, or my father,
confused, peeing in the doorway

In Bodega Alley, the vet sits
in his wheelchair, surrounded
by clothing and umbrellas

His friend folds up the tent
Invisible city
down here at the bottom

Manhattan hides behind 
cranes and jackhammers
We buy bodega coffee and dollar bagels

Diva waits by the fence, an unoccupied
blue beach chair left by her side 
Nobody touches another’s property in Bodega Alley

People know what is theirs
An open umbrella in sunlight,
a radio playing Harold Melvin 

Wake up everybody
Hurricanes to the south of us
Construction northeast and west

Down here at the bottom
It looks the same
The children of nobody sleep in the alley

The men play dominos on the corner
Wheelchairs cruise down the block
Diva waits for her buttered bagel

At home, I hear from a friend
She says she’s dying
We all are, I think

Unsure of how to leave
before the party ends
While I still remember how to walk.
Polarity, winter 2018





​Avi’s Poem

Nothing I can do, he’d say, 
shrugging his Slavic shoulders expressively,
Nothing I can do

Exiled from his homeland, from Italy,
from his Brighton Beach community

The life of an international drug dealer
fallen on hard times, HIV, homelessness,
prison, a lost daughter somewhere in Israel

An old passport photo shows a handsome
man, dashing, a word I’ve rarely employed

During my weekly case management visit
we’d sit in the kitchen of the small Sunset Park
apartment my agency had provided 

Sometimes he’d straddle his chair,
prop his chin on his hand, and say
in his Russian accent,
But what about you, Puma?
We talk always about me.
You must have problems, too.

And I’d answer something boring
about boundaries, and being there for him,
because, after all, Nothing I can do

He’d shrug his shoulders again
the whiff of his body odor signaling 
the end of the visit; out on the street
I’d breathe deeply, but I never discussed
personal hygiene with him because
Nothing I can do

Descended from rabbis,
he dabbled in Christianity
because the evangelist 
who also visited was pretty
and he had no women in his life,
just us and the occasional prostitute
When he died alone in his apartment
my co-worker waited for the medical examiner
for 12 hours, alone with Avi and his death rattle
Despite his flirtation with Jesus he died a Jew
and, with the help of the Hebrew Burial Foundation
I managed to get him a graveside funeral
Otherwise, he’d have gone to Potter’s Field 

We drove out to Staten Island
to say good-bye to Avi
The Maintenance Staff
The Recreational Therapist
The Director of Housing
The Evangelist
The Case Manager 

Even today, in untenable situations,
I sometimes think to myself, 
with a mental shrug,
Nothing I can do,
and remember Avi, straddling his chair,
saying, What about you, Puma?
What about you?

​

Puma Perl is a widely published poet and writer, as well as a performer and producer. She is the author of two chapbooks, Ruby True and Belinda and Her Friends, and two full-length poetry collections, knuckle tattoos, and Retrograde (great weather for MEDIA.)  A fifth, Birthdays Before and After (Beyond Baroque,) is due for release in 2019. She is the creator, curator, and producer of Puma Perl’s Pandemonium, which launched at the Bowery Electric in 2012 and brings spoken word together with rock and roll. As Puma Perl and Friends, she performs regularly with a group of excellent musicians. She’s received two honorable mentions and one first place award from the New York Press Association in recognition of her journalism and was the recipient of the 2016 Acker Award in the category of writing; she lives and works on the Lower East Side. 

​Photo by Don Sztabnik.

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